Why Digital Marketing is Important for Small Business

 

https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/why-digital-marketing-is-important-for-small-business

Contrary to what many people believe, digital marketing is not reserved for large corporations with large marketing budgets only. It can work for any business of any size in any industry, including small businesses. This article discusses how digital marketing can play a crucial role for small businesses to increase its visibility and brand awareness as well as convert interest into customers. The pandemic has accelerated the customers’ adoption of digital channels which means that digital is where businesses can find and engage with their customers. With digital marketing, small businesses have an opportunity to target either a wide and unlimited audience or certain geographic or niche markets.  In addition, digital marketing tools and platforms provide analytics that allows them to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and more importantly, the ROI. With this data, they are able to make an informed decision on whether to continue with their campaigns or experiment with others. Lastly, digital marketing has become so popular that small businesses must incorporate it into their overall strategy in order to thrive and keep up with the competition. Fortunately, digital marketing is scalable and cost-effective so it can be done even with a small budget.

Best Buy Continues Trend- Launches Advertising/ Retail Media Business

It's not just google, facebook (meta), and youtube that are in the business of selling advertising to brands. Retailers too have started to launch their own advertising platforms over the last few years- Target (Roundel), Walmart (Walmart Connect), Amazon (Amazon Media Group) to name a few.  This has been, in part, catapulted by with shifting consumer and shopper behavior.   

Best Buy, a leading electronics retailer, is the latest to launch it's own advertising business.  They are looking to leverage the millions of touch points they have with valuable shoppers, access to their information and shopping behavior through their first party data, and Best Buy’s digital platforms to help brands better connect with consumers and shoppers.   And of course, create a new revenue stream for Best Buy.     With the continued increase in digital media spending by brands, it is certainly a ripe time for Best Buy to look to capture it’s fair share. Given Best Buy’s strong position in this segment and that they already have a good understanding of what works with their shoppers, they should be poised to capture digital media spending dollars from brand partners.    It will be interesting to see if Best Buy is able to successfully build out and operate the in-house team.    They are competing with established players for talent and brand dollars.  Will they deliver better experience and results?

Read More on Best Buy: https://www.emarketer.com/content/best-buy-launches-in-house-ad-business

Read More on Retail Media: https://www.thetradedesk.com/us/news/why-retail-media-is-the-ad-industrys-sleeping-giant

12 key digital marketing trends 

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/12-digital-marketing-trends-all-business-owners-and-marketers-should-know-i/616647/

This article highlights key trends that are important for any company - from a start up to a well established one. Regardless of what we see and hear about the dangers of privacy, digital tools are here to stay. And provide a quick and easy way to reach wider audiences, if done properly. A quick synopsis of a few key elements from the perspective of a start up company is laid out below. 

a) It is essential to have a thoughtful and nimble digital strategy - there is so much information being thrown at people that it is important to identify what you want your customers to focus on when you get their attention and how will you reach them (influencers, experiences are some of the focal areas).

b) Facebook/Meta and LinkedIn are platforms that are here to stay and should be part of your digital strategy. 

c) A mobile friendly and optimized website is critical. 

d) Pay attention to privacy. 

Nike purchases NFT Metaverse sneakers, fad or future?

Over a year after the pandemic has decimated the supply chain for fashion brands, Nike acquires startup brand RTFKT, who specialises in virtual accessories including sneakers. Is this acquisition a moment when Nike has succumbed to current fads or is Nike looking to lead into the future of the Metaverse?

It would appear that the subject of NFTs are all the rage and is the new hot topic that can be overheard at most social gatherings. Fashion brands, not wanting to be left out of the current trends, have started to move into the virtual space. Even Prada is enlisting virtual influencers to keep up with the current trends. 

As the user experience of wearing the garments has been an essential element to a fashion brand, how could virtual fashion be a part of long-term strategy for fashion brands? Nike, having a recent history of using technology to interact with its consumers directly, has the foresight to gather data from their consumers to keep them with an edge in a competitive retail landscape. Nike Training Club, also known as NTC, and the Nike collaboration Apple watch show that Nike is investing into technology to keep in touch with the consumer and their needs. Will the acquisition of RTFKT give Nike another advantage at acquiring consumer’s data? Only the future will tell. 

Read more at: https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/technology/nike-acquires-virtual-fashion-start-up-rtfkt/

The Importance of Customer Data Management for Marketing Initiatives

https://martech.org/how-to-overcome-data-silos-and-fragmentation/

 I'm not sure the extent to which members of our class deal with the topics described in the article above, but I run into them frequently in my day to day work.  The articles discusses challenges associated with mastering and creating a unified view of customer touchpoints. While in class we discussed difficulties with marketing attribution, a great deal of effort is often spent defining the appropriate technology infrastructure and processes to even understand how you are engaging with a particular customer across various marketing tactics.

The article mentions how data from different marketing touchpoints may come from varying platforms which were intended to collect data from particular tactics, not to necessarily create a unified view of a customer across tactics. Some data sources might collect different attributes about the customer, or capture the same attributes differently. A representative from the cloud-based data management company Snowflake describes that organizations generally deploy data architectures to help marketers answer business questions for a need at a specific point in time. However, as these architectures grow and become more complex they, require a reassessment and a revised approach that is more holistic in serving generalized use cases. The article clearly serves as a plug for Snowflake's use as a centralized hub of marketing information or "Data Cloud", but this doesn't necessarily diminish the real obstacles posed by fragmented marketing data.

I work for a life sciences consulting firm that advises biopharmaceutical companies on issues related to commercial strategy. My team is actively working to scope a project for a prospective client whose organization already has many marketing data sources and agencies who produce such data, but which is still unable to develop a holistic map of customers journeys and preferences across the data which it collects. Our project is intended to define a structured approach to assist the client in standardizing the way marketing data is collected and shared within the organization, which is precisely the challenge described in this article. 

I'd be very interested to get perspectives from students in the class on if/how they might have encountered these types of challenges in their own professional roles.

Denny's gets into gaming with presence on multiplayer platforms

Over the past few years, Denny's has begun a digital transformation in attempt to become more costumer-centric and to attract younger consumers. In support of its transformation, Denny's has leveraged unique and engaging digital marketing efforts. In April 2020, Denny's took its digital engagement to the next level by meeting the target customer where he/she is at and joining the gaming universe. Denny's created a gamer account, Dennys247, on Nintendo's Switch, Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's PS4 where the company played games with customers while offering discounts for food ordered through its On-Demand platform, a key sales driver (this channel's importance accelerated during the pandemic as in-person dining options became restricted/limited).

Denny’s gaming initiative was an immediate hit. Within 20 hours, Denny's reached its friend limit on Nintendo and saw a 26% engagement rate on Instagram with more than 81,000 impressions on total engagements of almost 20,000. Also, on Twitter, Denny's experienced a 15% engagement rate with about 154,000 impressions and total engagements of more than 23,000. This interactive gaming experience resonated well with customers and attracted immediate attention driving increased brand heat.

As evidenced by this use-case, Denny's digital marketing efforts have the potential to considerably increase the company's traction and relevancy with younger diners- accelerating strategic goals.

Article of reference: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/dennys-gets-into-gaming-with-presence-on-multiplayer-platforms/576590/

2 Digital Marketing Trends to Consider for 2022

https://www.inc.com/peter-roesler/2-digital-marketing-trends-to-consider-for-2022.html

Interactive Content & Conversational Marketing were noted as two digital marketing trends to consider for 2022. As the pandemic continues I believe these will continue to increase in importance and become major conversion drivers. As the pandemic keeps people home, people are turning online as a form of entertainment and escapism and brands have an opportunity to establish themselves as content creators and thought leaders. 

I believe customers are looking for more than just product listings and brand loyalty will begin to shift to where customers feel connected and where they feel they are getting more than just the product. For example, instead of just listing a beauty product for sale, brands can host a live Q&A with the creator, have influencers share videos of how they use the product and speak to it’s benefits, share user generated content and host beauty Q&As to create engagement. By establishing themselves as experts and building a community they will become a trusted resource. Based on engagement brands will be able to target customers with ‘like’ products and build customer retention while increasing the customer's lifetime value. 

While getting to know the customer and engaging with them is important I think there is risk with increased personalization and automation of messaging. Suggesting a product a customer may like based on something they viewed could help start a conversation and build conversion or it could make the brand feel like ‘Big Brother.’ There needs to be a clear strategy and mindfulness around messaging in order to avoid that. In addition customers are starting to have more control over their privacy and limiting what brands can track and what they are willing to share. Leveraging tracking and automation will be important in identifying audiences and building content but having the human resources to build and support Interactive Content & Conversational marketing will be key in maintaining it.

PTON - Hit or Miss - The Bears are Starting to Backslide

 Peloton (Tkr: PTON) had an impressive run in 2020 with COVID-19 serving as a once-in-a-lifetime seeming catalyst - leading to a quintupling of the stock price. Consumers rode their hearts out to... well nowhere (because the bikes are stationary) and investors... welp, ended up nowhere too. Fundamentalists point to irrationally bullish forecasting and blown-out-of-the water valuations and thematic investors are simply left scratching their heads. Retail investors now look at their $1,000+ piece of equipment in their homes and cringe at the thought of the status of their PA accounts - double whammy. What the hell happened? 

Will PTON get out of this slump? There is much speculation about what might bring the stock back but, even the street's biggest bulls have cut their price targets by 50% or more. Talks of a major overhaul of valuation methodology are particularly interesting. The stock has been covered predominately by tech analysts but, now some wonder - is this a media stock? Am I buying a piece of Alex Toussaint or a stationary bike (boy does that make me giddy). Personally, one of the most interesting "opportunities" I see for PTON is rooted in behavioral psychology as well as advertising. I believe PTON is not going anywhere. Like any diet that worked, consumers will always remember the time they bought and regularly used their bike or tread and how they looked and felt. Not only will these feel-good moments never leave their memories, but they are also tied to a particularly memorable and monumental time in the lives of its consumer base. PTON has found a small ~4ft x 3ft space in your home and in your heart and will not be going anywhere. If PTON hone its unique position within its marketing strategy, it will not stay stationary. PTON's opportunity is worth a lot more than the metal frame one mounts and I'd put my money where my mouth is on that. 

Resetting the Conversation Around Marketing Privacy in the Metaverse

With the increasing interest and investments from many companies into this relatively nascent space, there's an open question around how privacy will be treated once or if the adoption picks up. Like we've seen in the past, whenever there are technological shifts, challenges emerge. In this case the challenges revolve around a lack of fundamental technical knowledge around virtual reality, limited exposure of the ecosystem to policy makers and general lack of confidence in consumers' mindsets. 

That said, the metaverse could offer the opportunity for companies and brands to learn from their past digital marketing efforts and create a privacy compliant marketing environment from the start. The development of the metaverse may be similar to the development and evolution of the internet including the role that advertisers play as new ecosystems are developed. It is therefore important for brands to actively engage in privacy conversations and play an active role in shaping the privacy framework for this new digital world.

Earlier, web cookies used to play an important role for tracking consumer behavior. However, Google plans to wind this down by 2023 which offers the opportunity to incubate safer methods for tracking such as contextual marketing that can be implemented in the meta verse. Another avenue to explore is to integrate community based decision making such as "community-based commerce" on TikTok that brands have leveraged to promote their products.

https://www.marketingdive.com/news/why-metaverse-could-be-breakthrough-privacy-compliant-digital-marketing/610661/

Basics of virtual economy to create demand

A lot of apps nowadays are testing out gamification mechanics hoping to improve and diversify their monetization channels. Implementing virtual currency is a common technique. An app or a game without virtual currency basically have to either charge people upfront or everywhere would be blocked by pay-walls. Virtual currency consolidated microtransactions to be a lot more manageable to the developer and a lot less intimidating to the users. 

The key for a virtual economy to work is demand. 

To understand demand in a particular ecosystem, one has to understand the user motivation. What is it that the users want in your app? For example, in a game, people want to have fun. There are many different ways your product can entertain a user. Understanding those motivation means you can identify the points of demand in which virtual currency can be placed. The more your user base uses those virtual currency, the probability of them purchasing more of those currencies would be higher; hence, increasing revenue. That is one high level perspective on how to tune for demand / sink of virtual currency.

To keep a level of good retention and engagement, the app or game would need to "source" the economy a bit - to provide some currency channel for the user to earn some currency as rewards for actions done. The amount rewarded would depend on the intrinsic motivations for users to engage with a particular feature in your product. High intrinsic value, you can source less or none; low intrinsic value should be sourced more. 

Amazon SEO & A9 algorithm

 

Amazon search engine optimization (Amazon SEO) is the process of optimizing your Amazon product listings to rank more highly in Amazon searches for related keywords. When you optimize your product listing, you make it easier for Amazon to find your listing and show it to shoppers who are looking for something like your product. 

Amazon SEO involves:

• Amazon keyword optimization
• Amazon product title optimization
• Product image optimization
• Backend keywords
• Pricing strategy
• The Amazon A9 algorithm

A9 is the algorithm Amazon uses for product searches. The Amazon A9 algorithm is a ranking process that influences where products appear for a particular keyword on the Amazon search engine results page (SERP).

Amazon ranks related to how likely the searcher will be to purchase the product.

How does A9 algorithm work? 

1. Amazon looks at the keywords in the shopper’s search query. If your product listing doesn’t have every keyword in the search query, it probably won’t appear in the search results, which is why keyword optimization is a big piece of Amazon SEO.

2. Amazon tries to assess purchase likelihood based on how well your product has performed in the past. To do this, the algorithm looks at these metrics at the keyword level: 

• Search result click-through-rate (CTR)
• Conversion rate on the product page
• Overall sales

Reference: https://tinuiti.com/blog/amazon/amazon-seo/ 

Chipotle Turned Its Cilantro Soap Meme Into A Real Product

 

https://www.mashed.com/676528/chipotle-turned-its-cilantro-soap-meme-into-a-real-product/

Nowadays, brands continually leverage social network and other emerging channels to engage young customers, who spend a significant amount of time in their digital life. In August, chipotle put up a controversial Instagram post making fun of cilantro, which is often seen as an ingredient in chipotle’s menu. The post showed a chipotle branded cilantro Soup. In the caption, chipotle states “OK but what if soap tasted like cilantro?” The post created lot of excitements on the internet, receiving 22.5K likes and 632 responses from cilantro lovers and haters. On Dec. 2^nd, chipotle announced that they bought this popular meme to life and started to sell it on chipotlegoods.com. The news got a lot of attentions from many networks, including cnn, fox news, CBS Boston, etc. This is a very successful digital marketing campaign focusing on creating native culture content. It also highlights the importance to connect online experience and social buzz with real life experience. These marketing activities are very effective and efficacious in building the brand's culture and value, particular appealing to young customers.

Twitter's new CEO innovation focus

Twitter had a big shake up this week when they announced their former CEO, co-founder Jack Dorsey, would be stepping down. Twitter's stock had a rough week, trading down 10% on the week and now sits down more than 20% on the year. The new CEO, Parag Agrawal, has his work cut out for him as he tries to improve the companies performance. This Barron's article touches on how Twitter is working on improving its product innovation. One of the areas they are focusing on is Brand advertising innovation, where their performance has lagged its competitors. Twitter's brand ad revenue currently dwarfs its direct-response ad revenue; direct response only makes up 15%. The new CEO needs to continue putting effort behind improving direct-response ad revenue to reach their target goal of a 50/50% revenue split. https://www.barrons.com/articles/twitter-stock-ceo-51638548530?tesla=y

BAT is surging, should Ad platforms be worried?

Basic Attention Token or BAT has increased in value recently as more retailers are accepting it as a form of payment.  BAT has had an impressive year, surging about 50% in the past week and 700% year-to-date, spiking to $1.85 this past week.  So why the spike? This past week Regal Cinemas announced that it will accept BAT as a form of payment at its movie theatres for ticket and snack purchases.  Other reasons for the surge include the expanding popularity of Brave and its challenge to Google Chrome.  Brave gives users control over ad frequency, ad scheduling, and control how much or little information they provide to brands. Users earn BAT by selectively choosing to view ads.  This behavior is likely very attractive to advertisers because this selection shows high intent from customer.  This is likely not an immediate threat to traditional browser advertising models, but this recent growth should be concerning to Google and others.  Not only because more retailers may begin to accept BAT as a form of payment but also given that Web3, specifically the terms crypto and block chain, are expanding outside of the niche technology world and into the mainstream consciousness.  

Source: https://marketrealist.com/p/basic-attention-token-bat-price-prediction-10-dollar/

Nestlé Thinks Ecommerce is Pretty Sweet

The multinational food conglomerate Nestlé is doubling down that Ecommerce will be a major source of its sales by 2025. Targeting that online sales will make up 25% of all sales by that year, the company is making significant investments in the digital marketing space. The proof is in the pudding too as Nestlé intends to increase the amount of money spent on digital marketing from 47% of the marketing budget to 70% in four years. Those investments intend to be spent on content, search, and customer feedback. Data acquisition is a big part of this initiative as Nestlé hopes to leverage information about their customers and turn it into sophisticated data science models that highlight purchase behavior and product selection. It's clear the company knows that investments made in this space has a bit of a flywheel effect: Acquire customers successfully online, capture their data, learn from their behaviors, build products and experiences that serve those customers and behaviors, and do it all over again. In order to get that off the ground though, investments must be made and that's just what they're doing. 

Source: 

https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/nestle-aims-generate-quarter-total-sales-e-commerce-by-2025-2021-11-17/

With Jack Dorsey Out, How Will Twitter Change?

 

Twitter is an online news and social networking site where people can communicate in short messages called “tweets.” Tweeting is posting short messages for anyone who follows you on Twitter or searches for content, with the hope that your words are useful and interesting to someone in your audience.  Some people use Twitter to discover interesting people and companies online, opting to follow their tweets.

One of the criticisms against Twitter was the lack of big innovations.  That said, the platform ran its first livestreaming event during Black Friday partnering with Walmart and Jason Derulo highlighting some of the best deals.  This type of change to the platform can mean significant changes to how the consumer shops.  This will also influence the way companies advertise.

What’s exciting to see is if Twitter can use its platform and transition moments of breaking news into targeted ads for new retail products.  This change could challenge social platforms, like Instagram and Tik Tok.  The future will be told, one tweet at a time…

Facebook’s new haptic glove lets you feel things in the metaverse

Facebook has been developing a haptic glove which allows users to feel bursts of air to simulate the sense of touch. This effort has been in progress for about seven years. With it's debut, Facebook is looking to create a virtual space to simulate real like experience without physically being anywhere expect the comfort of your own home. The glove is expected to integrate into Meta's virtual reality technology offerings.

This technology may not be appealing to people outside of gamers initially as putting on large goggles and wearing big gloves may not serve as the best customer experience. Not to mention, as the article discusses the feeling of being more invasive. The technology also can track and collect data about a person's movements. As privacy and data protection begin to be more of a focal point, this technology opens up the door for more of a concern.

Source: Facebook’s new haptic glove lets you feel things in the metaverse - Vox

Drones and its use in Digital Marketing Campaigns

While watching YouTube last week I came across a video of drones used for a marketing campaign. The Shanghai-based company used the drones to form a QR Code in the sky which can be scanned to lead to their site. This was so astonishing to see that I started researching and found out that many companies in Hong Kong are using these drones to light up the sky to promote their brands.

Drones can be used for various marketing strategies in promoting your digital marketing agenda. Commercial drone usage is spiking in a variety of industries, including agriculture, real estate, construction, news media, entertainment, film production, energy, and many more. Before drones became a commercial asset, it was hard to effectively display the depth or expansiveness of the products, properties or projects that many industries need to demonstrate to audiences. As part of the emerging technologies, this can be an excellent source of generating more traffic to your websites and showing off creativity.

Link to the QR Drone video: https://youtu.be/mj8uIr4oQRU

Digital Marketing Goes Physical

Digital Marketing Goes Physical 

One of the big selling points of digital marketing is attribution.  Digital marketers can granularly track the connectivity between marketing spend and revenue. Being able to construct these ROI analyses enables them to justify increasing spending and informs shifting spend between multiple channels.

This success has driven the search to add quantification and enable ROI calculations for offline advertising mediums as well.  One way this has been accomplished is through unique QR codes that brings the potential customer online and into the trackability-**LIMELIGHT**...enabled by the built-in QR reader in smart phones and the ubiquity of those smart phones.

And of course, MarTech / AdTech companies (e.g., Tapple) have sprung up to enable this trend seamlessly. Whether billboards, subway benches, on-product, or physical media this same QR-code driven tracking enables the ROI calc's at scale and in a standardized platform.  In essence taking the complexity of tracking across many physical channels and digitizing & centralizing them.  Cool, huh?

But, the trick is getting people to actually scan the QR codes...these are the 'clicks' but how many impressions are there and how many purchases/conversions did that drive outside of the narrow lens of QR world?  Marketers are still using 'multipliers' based on one-off studies or rules of thumb, the opportunity still exists to go further with offline quantification.  

This blogger is eager to see how that evolves.

Source: https://adage.com/article/tapple/how-use-qr-codes-achieve-experiential-roi/2384196

CMA:1 - Facebook: 0

 https://on.ft.com/3obnFzL

Someone once mentioned in conversation that Mark Zuckerberg's only reason for acquiring Instagram was so that it would not become something significant. A killer acquisition, as they call it. Luckily for Zuckerberg and Facebook (or, Meta, as we are forced to called it now), that deal went through without any regulatory pushback. Much as the company's acquisition of Whatsapp...

But those days are over. The UK's competition regulator, the CMA (Competition Marketing Authority) has effectively blocked a deal for Meta's acquisition of GIPHY, an online search engine for GIFs. 

Blocking the deal is a blow to Facebook (Meta) because it signals the end of an era when the company was able to make moves in a relatively unchecked market. All bets are on the table. Companies that seem to pose little to no competitive advantage are now being thought of as what they could represent (read: Instagram) if Facebook (Meta) were to own them. At 315M dollars, the deal would have represented another important consolidation for Facebook (Meta) to control the digital marketing space. Even though GIPHY does not run advertisements, and of course Facebook (Meta) is obfuscating its reasons for purchase interest in stating that GIPHY could never have competed with them on advertising, who is to say it couldn't have gotten there in the future... That is exactly the kind of scrutinizing questions that the CMA is asking, and will continue to do so from now into the future.